2 70 The Origin of a ' Thing ' and its Nature 



philosophy of to-day is pretty well agreed to start analysis 

 of a thing inside of the behaviour of the thing. A ' thing ' 

 is first of all so much observed behaviour. Idealists pass 

 quickly over the behaviour, it is true ; it is too concrete, 

 too single, for them ; it is not to them a thing, but a ' mere 

 thing.' But yet they do not any longer allow this 'mere- 

 ness ' to offend them to the extent of drawing them off to 

 other fields of exploration altogether. They try to over- 

 come the * mereness ' by making it an incident of a larger 

 fulness; and the 'implications' of the thing, the 'mean- 

 ing' of it 'in a system' — this 'shows up' the mereness, 

 both in its own insignificance and in its fruitful connection 

 with what is universal. 



So we may safely say of the idealist, that if he have a 

 doctrine of a 'thing,' it must, he will himself admit, not be 

 of such a thing that it cannot take on the particular form 

 of behaviour which the one ' mere thing ' under examination 

 is showing at the moment. There must, in short, be no 

 contradiction between the * real thing ' and the special 

 instance of it which is found in the ' mere thing.' 



He, the idealist, therefore, is first of all a phenomenist 

 in constructing his doctrine of the real; the 'what' must 

 be, when empirically considered, in some way an outburst 

 of behaviour. 



Now the idealist is the only man, I think, of whom 

 there is any doubt in the matter of this doctrine of be- 

 haviour, except the natural realist, who comes up later. 

 Others hold it as a postulate since Lotze, and later Brad- 

 ley, did so conclusively show the absurdity of the older 

 uncritical view which held, in some form or another, what 

 we may call the 'lump' theory of reality. A thing cannot 

 be simply a lump. Even in matter — so we are now 



